Stoics

Stoics, the disciples of Zeno; derived their name from the stoa or
portico in Athens where their master taught and founded the school in 340
B.C. The doctrines of the school were completely antagonistic to those
of Epicurus, and among the disciples of it are to be reckoned some of the
noblest spirits of the heathen world immediately before and after the
advent of Christ. These appear to have been attracted to it by the
character of its moral teachings, which were of a high order indeed. The
principle of morality was defined to be conformity to reason, and the
duty of man to lie in the subdual of all passion and a composed
submission to the will of the gods. It came short of Christian morality,
as indeed all Greekphilosophy did, in not recognising the Divine
significance and power of humility, and especially in its failure to see,
still more to conform to, the great doctrine of Christ which makes the
salvation of a man to depend on the interest he takes in, as well as in
the fact of the salvation of, other men. The Stoic was a proud man, and
not a humble, and was content if he could only have his own soul for a
prey. He did not see—and no heathen ever did—that the salvation of one
man is impossible except in the salvation of other men, and that no man
can save another unless he descend into that other's case and stand, as
it were, in that other's stead. It is the glory of Christ that He was the
first to feel Himself, and to reveal to others, the eternal validity and
divinity of this truth. The Stoic morality is selfish; the morality of
Christ is brotherly.